Chloe Benjamin - The Anatomy of Dreams

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Psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs lists physiological needs — for breathing and food, for sex and sleep — as the most basic of all drives. Next comes the need for safety, followed by the need for belonging. But what about the need to forgive? There is no belonging without it, no safety, no love. And so I found myself climbing into bed with Gabe that night. I started to read my novel, but Gabe was fidgety: he rustled through the Isthmus , discarded it, futzed with his radio alarm clock. Music crackled to life: Jay Z, a classical crescendo, a mariachi band.

“Can you turn that off?” I put my book down. “I’m trying to read.”

“Hold on.”

He fiddled with the dials, and Diana Ross’s “Ain’t Nobody’s Business if I Do” came through, rich and jazzy and clear. Gabe began to groove in his seat. A pillow bounced and fell off the bed. He got to his feet, still on the mattress, and extended his hand.

“Dance with me?” he asked.

“Gabe—”

“Come on, Sylve. We need a little music.”

Diana’s voice faded, and the Jackson 5 took her place. I want you back , they crooned, and what could I do but take his hand? We jived down the mattress, jumped and rebounded; we spun and dipped and clung. Gabe knelt, playing air guitar, shaking his head until his eyes were masked by hair. For seconds, it was possible to forget everything we had ever done to each other. Hysterical with need, we yanked the curtains shut. As the furnace exhaled heat, we stripped off our clothes and climbed back onto the bed.

But something wasn’t right, something had been lost, and we scrambled for it with increasing panic. We searched coolly at first — an arm adjusted, a shift in the hips — and then hastily, furious in our bafflement and so thorough that any desire turned to exhaustion, though we couldn’t stop. We wouldn’t. We tried positioning Gabe behind me and above me, my ankles on his shoulders or cast to the left. I lay on my back, on my stomach, on my side; I crouched on my knees with my elbows pointing into a pillow and my forehead bumping the bed frame. We sat up, my legs pretzeled around Gabe’s waist, and rocked. The radio music faded; a commercial came on. Gabe braced himself against our comforter, his fists sinking into the down, and thrust with as much determination as I’d ever seen in him. It was no use: he was softening, his face twisted with humiliation. Years ago, something had burned between us, solitary as a candle on a dining room table. But it had been snuffed out while we were elsewhere — while we took out the trash, while we made dinner, while we worked and slept in other rooms — and now, we could only try to catch the smoke.

“I’m sorry,” said Gabe.

He lay back heavily, and our bodies came apart.

“It’s okay,” I said, disentangling my legs from around his waist. My knees popped, the skin rubbed pink.

It must have taken minutes for us to notice that the doorbell was ringing. By the time we scrambled into our clothes and turned off the radio, someone was rapping on the door. Who could it be but Keller? We slipped down the stairs in our sweatpants and socks. Neither of us bothered to look through the peephole before Gabe unlocked the door.

Two police officers stood on the porch. One was a stocky younger man with ruddy skin and a brown mustache, precisely clipped; the other was a tall, lean woman with deep-set eyes and a tight bun, which tugged at her forehead.

“Dane County Police,” said the man.

Both cops pulled out their ID badges and flipped open the leather card cases before putting them away again. The woman took a small notebook from her belt and flicked up the cover.

“Am I looking at Gabe and Sylvie Lennox?”

“I’m Patterson,” I said. “Sylvie Patterson.”

“Gabe Lennox and Syl-vie Patterson.” The woman squinted at her notebook, writing quickly. “Lived here long?”

“Since August,” said Gabe. “What is this about?”

The woman looked up at us. “Is that your car in the driveway?”

“We don’t have to answer these questions,” said Gabe.

I squeezed Gabe’s arm. “It’s our car,” I said.

“Anyone else in the house?”

Gabe and I didn’t flinch, but a current passed between us.

“Is this about Anne?” I asked before I had the sense to stop myself.

“Anne?” asked the man, taking a step forward. He was broad across the chest, and he strained in his belted jacket. He and his colleague exchanged looks, and she scribbled again on the small pad. “Is Anne in the house?”

“No one is in the house,” said Gabe. “No one else is in the house.”

“Mind if we confirm that?”

It was the woman this time, her eyebrows cocked.

“Yeah, I do mind if you confirm that.” Gabe’s face was fixed with tension. “I know my rights. Tell me what this is about and we’ll go from there.”

The two cops exchanged another glance. Then the man sighed, and the woman flipped her notebook closed.

“Listen.” The man inclined his head confidentially. “You want to tell us what you were thinking making all that noise at twelve thirty on a Tuesday night?”

“That’s all this is?” spluttered Gabe. “A — a noise complaint?”

“Hey, buddy, hey.” The cop put his hands up. “We take noise complaints very seriously in this town.”

“I bet you do. And I bet you think you’re really fucking funny.” Gabe’s voice was rising, his neck veined. “Bet you thought it was hilarious, scaring us like that. You know what I think is fucking funny? Cops not doing their jobs. Cops coming to my front door, hassling me about a fucking noise complaint , when people are killing each other out there—”

“Not helping your case, my man,” said the cop, taking another step forward.

“Stop it, Gabe.” I took his wrists in mine, digging my nails into the thin underskin. “Let it go.”

Gabe had stopped shouting, but his face shook. A drop of sweat quivered at the tip of his nose.

“We’ll stop, I promise,” I said, keeping hold of him. “We’ve already turned the music off. We were having fun, that’s all. It was stupid.”

The man crossed his arms. His partner stared at us over the bridge of her nose.

“Understand, you are this close”—she squinted—“from a misdemeanor. We get another call, things get more serious.”

I nodded. Gabe wriggled out of my grasp and watched from the porch as the cops walked back to their car.

“Hey,” he shouted, just before they opened the doors. “Who reported us?”

The man opened the driver’s door and got inside without answering. The woman covered her eyes with one hand, as if trying to see us through the glare of the streetlights.

We didn’t notice that the light in Thom and Janna’s bedroom was also on until it abruptly went out, throwing the policewoman’s face into shadow. She nodded slightly. Then she climbed into the car and yanked the door shut. The car began to move, blinking in the night.

I locked the door. Gabe turned away from me and headed for the stairs. But before he got there, he turned abruptly and slammed the heel of his palm into the living room wall.

“Gabe,” I gasped.

“What kind of fucking business did they have reporting us?”

“Maybe we really were being loud.”

“Bullshit. They were our friends.”

His forehead was dented with anger, the folds around his eyes so deep a penny could have balanced inside them. He glared at me, waiting for a response. But I wanted to be back in our room, jumping on the bed with the radio on and my stomach in my throat. I wanted to see Gabe playing air guitar with as much vigor as any other twenty-four-year-old, his hair streaking the air. I wanted him to be blurry again.